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‘Our retreat to the beach in from of the advancing tanks was not without incident. On the way to the beach they picked up a man, with a shrapnel wound and took him along. We were not the first to have the idea of moving to the beach in the hope of rescue. There was already a crowd. I saw a couple of medics from his time at the hospital who came and tended to the wounded man.
‘The shrapnel seemed to have entered in the right shoulder area and passed through his body leaving at his left buttock, it was impossible to confirm what damage it had done on its way through.
‘It was dusk and I felt so helpless and ineffective. The hospital was probably already captured while he lay losing blood. He died during the night. Looking back in later years I often wish we had loaded him into a truck and taken him back to the hospital, where he might have had a chance of survival and to hell with the consequences.’
‘The man died just before dawn and I watched the melancholy ritual as one of the dog-tags was removed by the medics, the other being left for the burial party.’

This story was submitted to the people’s War site by a volunteer from CSV Oxford on behalf of the late Bill Harvey. It is a transcript of his own diary and several interviews. He gave written permission for the material to be edited and published.

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